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Know_files/FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS.pdf - D Ank Unlimited

Know_files/FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS.pdf - D Ank Unlimited

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Graham Hancock – <strong>FINGERPRINTS</strong> <strong>OF</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>GODS</strong><br />

... Each straw was placed with maximum precision to achieve perfect symmetry<br />

and streamlined elegance, while the bundles were so tightly lashed that they<br />

looked like ... gilded logs bent into a clog-shaped peak fore and aft. 6<br />

The reed boats of the ancient Nile, and the reed boats of Lake Titicaca<br />

(the original design of which, local Indians insisted, had been given to<br />

them by ‘the Viracocha people’ 7 ), had other points in common. Both, for<br />

example, were equipped with sails mounted on peculiar two-legged<br />

straddled masts. 8 Both had also been used for the long-distance transport<br />

of exceptionally heavy building materials: obelisks and gargantuan blocks<br />

of stone bound for the temples at Giza and Luxor and Abydos on the one<br />

hand and for the mysterious edifices of Tiahuanaco on the other.<br />

In those far-off days, before Lake Titicaca became more than one<br />

hundred feet shallower, Tiahuanaco had stood at the water’s edge<br />

overlooking a vista of awesome and sacred beauty. Now the great port,<br />

capital city of Viracocha himself, lay lost amid eroded hills and empty<br />

windswept plains.<br />

Road to Tiahuanaco ...<br />

After returning from Suriqui to the mainland we drove our hired jeep<br />

across those plains, raising a cloud of dust. Our route took us through<br />

the towns of Puccarani and Laha, populated by stolid Aymara Indians who<br />

walked slowly in the narrow cobbled streets and sat placidly in the little<br />

sunlit plazas.<br />

Were these people the descendants of the builders of Tiahuanaco, as<br />

the scholars insisted? Or were the legends right? Had the ancient city<br />

been the work of foreigners with godlike powers who had settled here,<br />

long ages ago?<br />

6 Thor Heyerdahl, The Ra Expeditions, Book Club Associates, London, 1972, pp. 43, 295.<br />

7 Ibid., p. 43.<br />

8 Ibid., p. 295.<br />

76

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